This invention relates to emergency telephone services (9-1-1 services). In particular, the present invention relates to the routing of emergency services calls from call centers to public safety answering points, and to the provision of data in connection with such calls.
Abbreviated number systems have been provided as part of the public switched telephone network to provide callers with a convenient, easily remembered number that can be used to access important services. Most prominently, the 9-1-1 system in the United States was developed for handling emergency service calls. Abbreviated number systems similar to the 9-1-1 system in use in the United States are in place in other countries for handling emergency service calls. The abbreviated number system established in Canada is the foreign system most similar to the system established in the United States. In addition, there are other abbreviated number calling systems in place in the United States and other countries for such purposes as handling municipal information and services calls (3-1-1). All of these special, or abbreviated number call systems that have geographic-based content suffer from similar shortcomings in their abilities to automatically place incoming calls to an action-response facility geographically proximate to the locus of the caller. In particular, calls must originate from within the serving area of telephone company switching equipment interconnected to the appropriate public safety answering point. Accordingly, calls handled through intermediary service providers, such as alarm companies and telematics service providers cannot benefit from the automated routing and information delivery features available in connection with many conventional abbreviated number systems.
In a basic emergency services notification and dispatch system (or 9-1-1 system), a telephone company end office (also known as a xe2x80x9ccentral officexe2x80x9d or a xe2x80x9cClass 5 officexe2x80x9d) is programmed to route all emergency calls (e.g., all 9-1-1 calls) to a single destination. The single destination is termed a public safety answering point (PSAP). In such an arrangement, all telephones served by the central office have their 9-1-1 calls completed to the PSAP. However, the areas served by respective telephone company central offices usually do not line up with the political jurisdictions that determine the boundaries for which a PSAP may be responsible. That is, a municipal fire department or police department may geographically include an area outside the area served by the central office, a condition known as underlap. Likewise, the municipal fire or police department may encompass an area of responsibility that is less expansive than the area served by the central office, a situation known as overlap. Further, the original basic 9-1-1 systems did not provide any identification of the caller. Accordingly, the PSAP human operator must obtain such information verbally over the line after the call is connected. In addition, basic 9-1-1 systems cannot support interconnection to other telecommunication providers such as independent telephone service companies, alternate local exchange carriers (ALECs), or wireless carriers.
Automatic number identification (ANI) is a feature for 9-1-1 services that was developed to allow the caller""s telephone number to be delivered with the call and displayed at the PSAP. This feature is useful for identifying the caller and, if the caller cannot communicate, for callback. Using subscriber information stored by telephone companies based upon telephone number, the caller""s name and address can be provided as well as part of automatic location identification (ALI) databases. In particular, the PSAP can query the ALI database using the caller""s number provided by the ANI feature to ascertain name and address information. However, such systems are ineffective where several telephone company central offices serve a PSAP.
In order to handle the situation of multiple central offices serving a single PSAP, the 9-1-1 tandem was developed. The tandem is a telephone company switch that provides an intermediate concentration and switching point. In particular, trunks from central offices are concentrated at a tandem office (a 9-1-1 tandem) from which a single trunk group serves a given PSAP. Often a 9-1-1 tandem comprises an otherwise common Class 5 telephone system end office (EO), with added software to configure it for 9-1-1 operations. Such concentration of trunks reduces the size and cost of PSAP equipment.
More recently, enhanced 9-1-1 (E9-1-1) has become available. Some of the features of E9-1-1 include selective routing, ANI, ALI, selective transfer and fixed transfer. However, as with a basic 9-1-1 system, a 9-1-1 call must originate within the serving area of the E9-1-1 tandem.
It would be desirable to provide for the routing of requests for emergency services to an appropriate public safety answering point even if such requests are placed through central call centers. Such call centers include alarm monitoring centers, automatic collision notification centers, and other centers that may receive requests for emergency services that originate from a location that is removed from the location of the call center.
Alarm companies typically provide for monitoring of subscriber premises from a central monitoring station. In a typical alarm implementation, a security system communicator is placed in the home or business. When an alarm is detected, the communicator seizes the telephone line from the telephone instruments, dials a number in the alarm company monitoring station, transmits to the receiver in the monitoring station information regarding the client""s account information and the alarm event, and releases the telephone line. The alarm company may then call the subscriber number to weed out false alarms. If a valid alarm is ascertained, the alarm company looks up the telephone number for the emergency service provider that serves the client""s area and dials a 10 digit number to report the incident. The alarm company then verbally passes any information it has that may assist the call taker. In addition to stationary premises alarms, new types of personal alarms are being introduced that may be worn on the person and use wireless communications to alert the alarm company.
Automatic collision notification (ACN) centers receive calls placed from vehicles requiring assistance. For example, in the event of an accident, equipment in an automobile or an occupant of the automobile may call the ACN center using a wireless link, such as a cellular telephone system, rather than a public emergency service number, and pass information related to the accident to the ACN center. This data may be uploaded from a unit in the automobile to a database at the call center. The operator at the ACN center then attempts to determine the appropriate emergency service agency to respond to the request, and calls that agency using a 10 digit number. The operator verbally communicates any information he/she has about the caller""s location and situation to the agency personnel. This scenario is complicated in that, like alarm monitoring centers, ACN call centers may handle calls from callers that may be located anywhere in the country or the world.
Another type of centralized call center may be associated with requests for emergency services originating from communication devices utilizing a voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) connection. An IP private branch exchange (PBX) typically serves this type of connection. The actual location of the caller is unknown at the time that a call is initiated. Accordingly, for proper routing of the VoIP phone connection, the location of the caller must be determined. Current solutions require a VoIP user to dial a special number for emergency service, which will connect them to an attendant at a third party emergency service provider call center that will in turn call the appropriate emergency service number. Dialing of 9-1-1 by the end users over these connections is not supported with the existing technology.
In each of the examples noted above, in order to determine the correct PSAP for such calls placed to a third party emergency service call center, operators must manually cross-reference the client""s location or address with the appropriate PSAP. These calls are treated as anonymous calls and cannot receive the normal call treatment of a 9-1-1 call. In particular, because typical 9-1-1 treatment cannot be applied, there is no additional information, such as caller identification and location information, that can be provided to the PSAP automatically. There have been no solutions proposed for automatically routing calls requesting emergency services from third party emergency service call centers to an appropriate PSAP and for delivering data regarding such calls. In particular, the prior art examples do not provide sufficient flexibility to meet the needs of calls placed from an emergency services call center or other center serving a wide geographic area (i.e. a geographic area encompassing more than one E9-1-1 tandem).
This invention allows an emergency service call center (ESCC) to automatically route a call or request for emergency services to the correct public safety answering point (PSAP) and provide the PSAP with pertinent information (e.g., latitude and longitude, street address, vehicle collision data, etc.) related to the caller. In particular, the present invention provides an emergency services complex (ESC) that has a map of PSAP boundaries covering a large area. For example, the ESC may provide coverage for the entire United States.
In addition, an interface between a positioning server (PS) and a call center database (CCDB) that can pass call related client information to the PS and allow the PS to instruct the CCDB on how to route the call is provided. An interface between the PS and the automatic location identification (ALI) database is provided to allow the PSAP to query for pertinent customer information, and an interface between the PS and an information retrieval center (IRC) to allow for other authorized agencies to obtain pertinent data, or to push data to those IRCs, are also provided. In addition, the present invention allows the use of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to deliver the emergency service calls received by an emergency service call center (ESCN) to an appropriate PSAP and to have the call treated as any other 9-1-1 call (i.e. as a native 9-1-1-call).
An embodiment of the present invention may be used by service providers operating an emergency service call center who need to transfer calls to emergency service agencies in order to get the appropriate emergency response teams dispatched. For example, one type of emergency service call center, a personal alarm monitoring (PAM) agency, may get an alarm that a client is in need of help through the activation of an alert unit on the person of the client or in the client""s home or business. The PAM agency can call the appropriate PSAP without having to manually cross reference the PSAP that serves the client""s area. The PAM agency can also pass relevant data about the client that can be displayed at the PSAP.
As a further example, a car crash may occur anywhere in the nation, and notification is transferred to a national automatic collision notification (ACN) call center, a type of emergency service call center provided in connection with telematics services. The national ACN call center may use this invention to automatically route the call to the appropriate PSAP. In addition, specific information about the car crash may be made available to the PSAP based upon the response to a query initiated by the PSAP.
As yet another example, a caller using a VoIP telephone system to initiate a request for emergency assistance may have the request routed to the appropriate PSAP using an embodiment of the present invention. For a VoIP connection, the location of the caller is critical for determining the appropriate PSAP for getting help to the caller. During authentication, which involves validating that the end user is a subscriber to the VoIP Service in question, or shortly thereafter, the location of the caller, which may include an actual address, is made available. The location information and any other data deemed necessary by the VoIP service provider populates a call center database (CCDB) maintained by the VoIP service provider. This is similar to the CCDB maintained by a telematics service provider. In addition, the original location (e.g., the street address) information is converted to a latitude and longitude location to determine the emergency service zone in which the caller is located.
For the call origination scenario, the ACN center, PAM center or VoIP service provider (or ESCC), may use a computer telephony integration (CTI) application where the call center database (CCDB) queries, across an interface provided in connection with an embodiment of the present invention, a positioning server (PS) system in an emergency services complex (ESC) node, passing the latitude, longitude and other relevant information related to the caller. The PS uses the latitude and longitude to query a coordinate routing database (CRDB), across an interface, to obtain the emergency service zone (ESZ) for the target PSAP. The PS contains two types of tables. The first type contains routing digits defined as emergency services routing numbers (ESRNs). The ESRNs can be used by the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to route the call to a terminating emergency communications network (ECN) switch or E9-1-1 tandem. The other type of table contains emergency services query keys (ESQKs). This key, which is unique for a given call, is used by the emergency services network to route the call to the appropriate PSAP and is used by the PSAP to query for incident information. From the ESZ received from the CRDB, the PS selects an ESRN and an ESQK. The ESC returns these to the CCDB. The ESCC then routes the call to the PSTN across a primary rate ISDN (PRI) interface using the ESQK as the calling party number and the ESRN as the called party number.
The PSTN routes the call across the network to a terminating switch. The first alternative uses an ECN switch. This switch may be a Class 5 switch provided by the incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC), competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) or a third party provider who owns the ECN switch. When the ECN switch receives the call it uses the ESRN to determine the appropriate E9-1-1 tandem, deletes the ESRN and adds 9-1-1 as the called party number, and forwards the call to the E9-1-1 tandem. The second alternative directly routes the call to the E9-1-1 tandem. Through translations on the E9-1-1 tandem, the ESRN is presented as an emergency number so processing of the call is treated as an emergency call. For both alternatives, the E9-1-1 tandem then processes the call as a normal 9-1-1 call using the ESQK as the caller""s automatic number identification (ANI).
When the PSAP receives the call, it queries the automatic location identification (ALI) system with the ESQK. The ALI system recognizes that the ESQK is associated with the PS and queries the PS across an interface. The PS returns to the ALI pertinent information related to the caller (latitude and longitude, address, crash information, etc.) The ALI returns this information to the PSAP to allow the PSAP to display the information to the PSAP operator.
For a call conference scenario where an ACN, PAM, or other VoIP call center operator is in voice communication with the calling or originating party, position information is transferred to the CCDB and the operator at the call center may press a single call conference button to activate a call to the PSAP. Using a CTI application, the CCDB queries the PS as discussed above. The ACN call center then makes a 3-way call across the PSTN. From this point the call flow is as discussed above.
Once the data is available at the PS, other Information retrieval centers (IRC) may require access to the data, e.g., a trauma center, the department of transportation, etc. An interface between the PS and IRC provided by the present invention allows pertinent information to be provided to the IRC in a format required by those IRCs, or the PS could push the pertinent data to the IRC, allowing for immediate notification.